"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

grazed peacefully a little distance off, soft ears turning with the turning of the wind.
"The Wise One Ilae says that no one followed after you because no one could, o my brother." Cold
Death raised her head to look at him, and she looked amused.
"Every time parties seek to enter the pass there are avalanches, not just those few whose marks I saw.
Moreover, the Keep is now surrounded by a lot of men in armor who came up from the valley below,
black men and brown and golden. They sit in front of the gates of the Keep with all their weapons
pointed at them, ready to slay the first person who opens those gates, and everyone within eats potatoes
and complains about the smell of the sheep and shouts at one another over what ought to be done."
The Icefalcon stared at her as if she'd slapped him, and she grinned back like the demons that
occasionally one saw in the coulees, the little ones that seemed mostly harmless.
"Indeed I see them now, o my brother," she said. "The smoke of their campfires hangs blue in the air and
the glitter of their spears like stars in the turning light. Warriors of the Alketch lands, I think, like your Vair
who rides north."
Her grin broadened, and she clicked her tongue softly, at which faint sound Scorpion Eater and Ashes
trotted over to where she and the Icefalcon sat. "I do love coincidence, don't you?"
"Show me one," said the Icefalcon dryly, "and I'll let you know."
The sun westered, stretching out their shadows on the grass. Bison raised their heads as they passed,
curly-wooled black humps higher than a mounted man's head, but clearly saw only other bison.
In more than one place the Icefalcon saw signs of beasts not common to these lands twelve years before,
rhinoceros and mammoth and the broad-horned elk of the Night River Country; the winds blew chill on
his back.
"The North has driven us out, o my brother." Cold Death bent forward with the rhythm of her mare's
stride as they climbed from the coulee to the plain above. "Blue Child led us south from the winter
steadings when the bison and the mammoth ceased to forage. There was an ice storm the winter after
you left that killed all of Plum's band, and another in the spring. Now the Ice in the North covers all the
Night River Country down as far as the Ugly Hills. Everything is changed there."
The Icefalcon had heard this from Loses His Way-and a great deal about the grazing conditions around
the Sea of Grass as well, but it still touched him with a finger of sorrow. Gil-Shalos sometimes talked
about why this would be, a curious tale of the stars, and the sun's heat failing, like other tales she told
around the watchroom hearth fire, fascinating in spite of its illogic. Everyone in the Real World had
known for generations that the ice in the North moved, though seldom so quickly.
The Stars had told his Ancestors, years beyond years ago, Change is all that there is. Do not hold
anything, for everything will go away in time.
But he hadn't thought of this in terms of the Night River Country. It was an uncomfortable reminder how
far he had fallen short of the wisdom of his Ancestors-of the perfection for which he had always
striven-to realize that despite all his upbringing he hadn't quite thought of it in terms of Noon's death.
In a coulee still muddy from the rain they found the prints of horses, a war band a hundred and thirty-five
strong, moving south ahead of them.
"The Empty Lakes People," said the Icefalcon, slipping from Scorpion Eater's back to study the marks
of the moccasin stitching and to note that Barking Dog, a minor warchief of that people, was still riding
that long-tailed dun that overreached its own stride on the left side.
Loses His Way had detailed to him a good deal about the pedigrees of that animal-whose name was
Saber-tooth Horse-and most of the rest of the bloodlines of the herds of the Empty Lakes People, beasts
inferior to the herds of the Talking Stars People, but some of the information was useful.
He swung back up onto his mount, followed Cold Death down the wash. "Loses His Way and his party
must have been scouting from the main hunt."
"More grief to them, then," said Cold Death. "Here." She nodded toward the ridge of hills before them,
identical to all other ridges in these lands, a civilized person would have said. "From here we let the
horses free and walk."
She slid from Ashes' back and gave her round flank a smack. The mare-and the Icefalcon's